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TRANSYLVANIA. Dir Tony Gatlif. 2006

Transylvania Gatlif


It’s unclear whether this film is supposed to be a romance, a road trip, or a creative documentary, and the result is a bewildering series of unconnected scenes.

A disturbed French girl, Zingarina, arrives in Transylvania with her anxious sister as carer, and an interpreter, and the trio are searching for Zingarina’s absconded lover. She finds him, he rejects her, and she descends into a prolonged schizophrenic episode and, because we know nothing about these characters and have been shown nothing to evoke our interest or sympathy, it’s meaningless and irritating.

Zingarina whirls around in her own misery, messing up a really interesting carnival procession of national costumed musicians and singers when, as a documentary, this could have been fascinating and illuminating. At various times during the film there are tantalising glimpses of local performers but there is little dialogue and no insight into either gypsy or local culture, leaving the impression of a film shot out of a car window – fleeting and unsatisfying. Had Gatlif taken the approach of Wim Wender’s Buena Vista Social Club this could have been a rich experience.

Instead, he tries to work in an implausible relationship between Zingarina and a parasitic itinerant dealer who preys on the poor. The dealer is a Bob Geldof lookalike who becomes marginally likeable and achieves some redemption when he (inexplicably) links up with the crazed Zingarina, sees she is a deluded hysteric, and takes her to be exorcized of her demons. There follows a long scene with her behaving - that is standing still and not thrashing around - amidst exquisitely beautifully male voice toning while a priest reads from his book, but the pair run away without paying and get a curse thrown at them. Pretty ungrateful.

However, she seems okay now and, the pair travel around, living in a car; she holds out the palm of her hand a lot, showing a big eye drawn on it, seems to get aroused by hitting him, then starts wearing red skirts and everyone thinks she is a gypsy. Cutting out the daft relationship from this film would leave some intriguing footage of musicians and singers but it would take real stamina to sit through it for these randomly inserted snippets of local colour.

So many questions are unanswered and continuity is a real problem. Why does Z neurotically cling to her sister and, two minutes later, disappear leaving her a note, and what is wrong with her sister’s legs? What is the meaning of the massive tattoo on Zingarina’s abdomen? How does she goes to sleep in a grey skirt and wake up in a black, flowered one? How come, after living on the road for seven months, her hair remains dyed dark brown without her roots showing, and she still has on dark eyeliner?

The first half of this film is a complete riddle and, struggling to find some logic or meaning to it during the second half, one slim possibility emerges: people keep leaving. Must be about grief and loss then. Ah, only one person comes back. She smiles. The end.

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